The Balkans between history and imagination

The course's main objective is to offer the following cometences to the students:
- understanding the basic concepts related to Balkan studies; understanding the ways representations and discourses on the Balkans help creating and maintaining symbolic, social, political and economic hierarchies;
- ability to collect relevant material and a multiperspective analysis of a particualar phenomenon;
- ability to recognize and analyse power relations in historiography, popular culture, media and political discourses and practices
- presenting results of their own research that reflect ability of independent and conceptual thinking and critical judgement
- ability to recognize effects of stereotypes in cultural patterns in the past and the present.

The successful integration in the study course is connected with the knowledge of other cultural historical formations in the field of culture and history and with other courses in the programme.

The course will offer an overview of historical facts and prevalent representations of the Balkans. Its principal aim is to present students with critical tools understand the ways historical interpretations, representations mediated through literature, art and popular culture, as well as political discourses and actions intertwine and affect each other.
Lectures and seminars will familiarize students with most important concepts used to describe and understand social, political, economic and cultural reality of Balkan societies. The students will be presented with prevalent theoretical approaches to culutral history of the Balkans and will analize representations of the Balkans in literature, popular culture and political discourses.
Lectures:
Part 1: Basic concepts (1-8)
- genealogy of notions the Balkans, Europe, Southeast Europe, Western Balkans
- historical legacies and their role in the symbolic geography of the Balkans
- orientalism, balkanis
- the Balkans and post-colonial/decolonial perspectives
Part 2: Representations (9-20)
- the Balkans as European other
- the Balkans and representations of otherness in literature, art, and popular culture
Part 3: Representations of the Balkans in Slovenia (21-25)
Part 4: From representations to power relations (26-35)
- economic relations of the European periphery
- conditions of production of knowledge on the Balkan region
- race, class, ethnicity in the Balkan context
- contemporary political uses of the Balkans and »Balkanness«
The seminar:
In the framework of the seminar meetings there will be directed discussions related to particular topics addressed during the lectures. We will also discuss shorter texts and fragments from historiographic sources.
Students will also prepare and present analyses of selected phenomena/discourses/practices related to topics discussed during the lectures. These analyses will be the base for the essays they are expected to write and submit.

The students are familiarized with the concepts related to cultural history of the Balkans. They understand how representations of the Balkans were being formed and what are their effects in the social, cultural, economic and political spheres – both in the past and today. They are able to collext material related to the specific topic, analyse it and produce an academic and analytical text in the form of an essay or encyclopedia entry.

• Milica Bakić-Hayden in Robert M. Hayden, Orientalistične različice na temo »Balkana«: simbolna geografija v nedavni jugoslovanski politiki kulture. V Zbornik postkolonialnih študij, ur. Nikolai Jeffs, Krtina: Ljubljana, 2007. Catalogue
• Ana Hofman, Music Heritage in Relocation: The "Guča na Krasu" festival, Dve domovini/Two homelands 39, 2014, 73-87. E-version
• Danijela Majstorović, Discourse and Affect in Post-Socialist Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
• Tanja Petrović, Dolga pot domov: Reprezentacije zahodnega Balkana v političnem in medijskem diskurzu/A Long Way Home: Representations of the Western Balkans in Political and Media Discourses, Mirovni inštitut. Ljubljana 2009. E-version
• Mirroring Europe: Ideas of Europe and Europeanization in Balkan Societies, ur. Tanja Petrović, Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2014. Catalogue
• Piro Rexepi, The Politics of Postcolonial Erasure in Sarajevo, Interventions, 2018.
• Maria Todorova, Imaginarij Balkana. Predgovor Svetlana Slapšak, spremna beseda Peter Vodopivec (401 strani) : (Prevod dela Imagining the Balkans, Oxford University Press, Inc. 1997). Ljubljana: Institut za civilizacijo in kulturo, 2001. Catalogue
• Maria Todorova, Balkanism and Postcolonialism or on the Beauty of the Airplane View, in: Costica Bradatan/Serguei Alex. Oushakine (ur.), Marx’s Shadow. Power and Intellectuals in Eastern Europe and Russia. Lanham 2010, 175–195. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004382305_007

Written or oral exam (60%)
Seminar paper/project assignment (40%)

Assist. Prof. Daša Tepina, PhD graduated in history and sociology of cuture at the University of Ljubljana. She defended her doctoral thesis entitled Revolutionary utopiy: anarchism in practices and theories. Latest research projects Models and Practices of Global Cultural Exchange and Non-aligned Movement: Research in the Spatio-Temporal Cultural Dynamics and Protests, art practices and culture of memory in the post-Yugoslav context. Currently she is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Nova Gorica,

Selection of articles:
1. TEPINA, Daša. Revolucionarne utopije : anarhizem v praksah in teorijah. 1. izd. Maribor: Aristej, 2022.

1. TEPINA, Daša. Anarchism and the history of social movements in Slovenia. Journal of breath research. 2021, vol. 2, no. 20, str. 1-16.

2. GRAFENAUER, Petja, TEPINA, Daša. Art and rebellion : the struggle for freedom and autonomy at the Ljubljana 2020/2021 protests. Third text. 2022, vol. 36, iss. 5, str. 409-428.

3. TEPINA, Daša. Vrednost umetniškega ustvarjanja in avtonomni prostori na primeru AKC Metelkova mesto. Časopis za kritiko znanosti. 2021, letn. 49, št. 283, str. 103-121.

4. TEPINA, Daša, GRAFENAUER, Petja. Hegemonija kapitalizma in vizualni kod v neuvrščeni Sloveniji. V: et al. Vizualna pismenost : teoretsko raziskovanje, razumevanje, ustvarjanje in interpretacija sodobnosti. 1. izd. Ljubljana: Založba Univerze, 2024. Str. 44-60.

5. GRAFENAUER, Petja, TEPINA, Daša. Cuban representation at the Biennial of Graphic Arts and non-aligned cultural policy. The international journal of cultural policy. [Print ed.]. 2024, vol. 30, no. 2, str. 207-219.

6. TEPINA, Daša. Yugoslav–Egyptian cultural relations : a case study of art intersections in Ljubljana and Alexandria in the 1960s and 1970s. V: PREDAN, Barbara (ur.), TEPINA, Daša (ur.). The culture of the non-aligned : the clash of cultural and political narratives. Ljubljana: University of Ljubljana Press, 2023. Str. 199-221, 257-258, 266-267.

7. TEPINA, Daša. Umetniška stičišča : utopije - neuvrščenost. V: PREDAN, Barbara (ur.). Robovi, stičišča in utopije prijateljstva : spregledane kulturne izmenjave v senci politike. Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino: Akademija za likovno umetnost in oblikovanje, 2022. Str. 77-90,

8. CRNKIĆ, Adin, TEPINA, Daša. Misliti anarhizem v slovenskem prostoru : kronologija in zgodovinski razvoj. Časopis za kritiko znanosti. 2014, letn. 42, št. 257, str. 13-29.

9. TEPINA, Daša. Anarhizem kot revolucionarna utopija. V: PAGON, Neda (ur.), PAGON, Saša (ur.), BORAK, Neven. Utopije - še vedno : zbornik o utopijah v 21. stoletju. Ljubljana: Studia humanitatis, 2015. Str. 257-281.